The European Commission has released guidelines for how its Member States can start to ease coronavirus travel restrictions and enable tourism to begin again.

The Baltic states are creating a “travel bubble”, allowing citizens to travel freely between them.

New Zealand and Australia have committed to introducing a trans-Tasman “COVID-safe travel zone”, as soon as it’s safe to do so.

As countries begin to ease lockdown measures in order to kickstart their economies, all eyes are on how international borders will reopen, thereby enabling business and tourism to resume.

Some nations have already agreed on, or mooted the possibility of, establishing “travel bubbles” whereby groups of countries who have low, manageable rates of infection allow each others’ citizens to enter freely. Quarantine restrictions are meanwhile imposed on those outside the bubble.

The first principle for “the safe and gradual restoration of tourism activities” is epidemiological evidence showing the spread of COVID-19 has “significantly decreased and stabilized for a sustained period of time, and is likely to remain stable with the increased tourist population”.

Other criteria that need to be met include: sufficient health capacity to deal with tourists getting sick; testing; surveillance and monitoring; and contact tracing.

What is the World Economic Forum doing about the coronavirus outbreak?

A new strain of Coronavirus, COVID 19, is spreading around the world, causing deaths and major disruption to the global economy.

Responding to this crisis requires global cooperation among governments, international organizations and the business community, which is at the centre of the World Economic Forum’s mission as the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation.

The Forum has created the COVID Action Platform, a global platform to convene the business community for collective action, protect people’s livelihoods and facilitate business continuity, and mobilize support for the COVID-19 response. The platform is created with the support of the World Health Organization and is open to all businesses and industry groups, as well as other stakeholders, aiming to integrate and inform joint action.

As an organization, the Forum has a track record of supporting efforts to contain epidemics. In 2017, at our Annual Meeting, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) was launched – bringing together experts from government, business, health, academia and civil society to accelerate the development of vaccines. CEPI is currently supporting the race to develop a vaccine against this strand of the coronavirus.

Crucially, it suggests that those EU countries where the rate of infection is slowing to a similar extent could ease restrictions with each other:

“If a generalized lifting of restrictions is not justified by the health situation, the Commission proposes a phased and coordinated approach that starts by lifting restrictions between areas or Member States with sufficiently similar epidemiological situations.”

2. Containment measures being applied throughout the whole journey, including at border crossings.

3. Economic and social considerations: giving priority to “cross-border movement in key areas of activity and including personal reasons”.

The Commission also stresses the importance of “non-discrimination”: “When a Member State decides to allow travel into its territory … it should do so in a non-discriminatory manner – allowing travel from all areas, regions or countries in the EU with similar epidemiological conditions…

“Any restrictions must be lifted without discrimination, to all EU citizens and to all residents of that Member State regardless of their nationality, and should be applied to all parts of the Union in a similar epidemiological situation.”

Member States have also agreed on allowing COVID-19 tracing apps to operate across borders, so that citizens can be warned of possible infection when they travel in the EU.

The Commission said: “Such tracing apps must be voluntary, transparent, temporary, cybersecure, using anonymised data, should rely on Bluetooth technology and be inter-operable across borders as well as across operating systems.”

They said the zone would be “mutually beneficial, assisting our trade and economic recovery, helping kick-start the tourism and transport sectors, enhancing sporting contacts, and reuniting families and friends”.

But they added a note of caution: “Neither country wants to see the virus rebound so it’s essential any such travel zone is safe. Relaxing travel restrictions at an appropriate time will clearly benefit both countries and demonstrates why getting on top of the virus early is the best strategy for economic recovery.”

They also said that once effective travel arrangements had been established across the Tasman, they would broaden the zone out to include Pacific Island Countries.